Nashville's historic tourism streak comes to an end

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Jae S. Lee

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Lower Broadway is fun anytime, with more than 14 honky-tonks. And there?s no cover charge.
Lower Broadway is fun anytime, with more than 14 honky-tonks.(Photo: Larry McCormack / The Tennessean)Buy Photo

Nashville's historic streak of 70 consecutive months of record-breaking tourism numbers has come to an end, concluding an era defined by a new downtown convention center, thousands of new hotel rooms and the elevation of Music City as an international tourist destination.

The streak, the longest in U.S. history, ended in October, according to new data from STR made available by the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. October would have set the all-time Nashville record for hotel tax collections, one of two metrics used by the industry to measure local tourism. The string of monthly room night records, however, did come to an end.

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Butch Spyridon(Photo: THE TENNESSEAN)

Instead of lamenting the broken streak, Nashville's tourism chief said he anticipates a "new normal" where the city remains one of the nation's most desirable destinations for business and leisure tourists. CVC President and CEO Butch Spyridon also challenged Nashville's tourism leaders to not let up and be creative in working to draw visitors here.

"We missed breaking another record, but it still is the second best month in the history of the city," Spyridon said. "I'm as competitive as anybody you'll find. So I don't like the streak ending. Anybody who knows me would laugh if they thought (I was saying) it's good. But it lasted longer than intellectually I thought it would. We literally were prepared two months previously for it to end. And to see it happen in October and say, 'We ended the streak with the second best month in the history of the city.'"

Spyridon said now is a good time to "recalibrate." He pointed to the pending arrival of about 12,000 new hotel rooms planned for Nashville in the coming years as a challenge.

"We've got more rooms coming and we're going to trip a few more months here in this next year, so let's be more aggressive, let's be smarter and let's not rely on momentum completely," he said.

Spyridon said he doesn't believe the sky is falling, although it's too soon to know what the city's new expectations are for tourism. He said Nashville is now a top-10 destination if you combine business, convention and leisure travel. Houston had the previous record of 59 straight months of growth.

Between the $623 million Music City Center and the thriving Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, business and convention travel remains strong, Spyridon said. The cavalcade of national media tapping Nashville as an It-City and great place to vacation helped drive the city's status as a leisure tourism destination. Always a hub for country music, Nashville's non-country music offerings caught fire and earned the fascination of music fans, Spyridon said.

The challenge will be the increased competition driving down room rates. Nashville currently has 27,108 hotel rooms and another 12,307 are somewhere in the pipeline. Spyridon warned not everyone can win with all of that hotel-room competition on the way.

"We're not going back to where we were five years ago," Spyridon said. "We'll find this place where rates will see some leveling out and tiered rate structure will come more into play as (new rooms) come along, and I think we'll be able to rebuild the base of business because everybody will be more aggressive and hungrier. They haven't been hungry, and that's kind of a nice place to be."

Spyridon said economic generators, like the continued growth of Nashville's tourism industry, and more corporate relocations could help drive up demand. The opportunity is there to continue growing tourism, even as the streak ends, he said, hinting at significant announcements in the areas of music and sports in the coming months.

"Based on today's generators where we're not a hot business travel like New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and we don't have gaming, and we don't have a theme park, we have music, a cool brand, Music City Center and Opryland," Spyridon said. "Without adding to that, we have to be cautious about over-building. You either have to have less rooms built out, or more demand.

"We have outpaced being the media darling and being on everybody's list. We've outkicked our coverage in a very good way, and we worked hard at it. There was intent, but there was no expectation we'd get to where we are."

The end of the streak by the numbers

70: consecutive months of monthly records for room night bookings

5.9 million: Room nights sold in fiscal year 2011-12

7.2 million: Room nights sold in fiscal year 2015-16

$106 million: Hotel tax collections in 2011

$147.5 million: Hotel tax collections in 2015

Source: CVC

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